cellini's Diaryland Diary

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In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

I re-read Yeats' poem, 'The Circus Animals' Desertion' today. I certainly get the piece more so now than I did when I first read it 10 years ago or whatever it's been.

That rhyme structure has always bugged the shit out of me. A,B,A,B,C,D,A,A. It doesn't exactly flow. However, that last line in the final stanza covers for a lot of sins:

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Huh. So Yeats spent his whole life turning the everyday shit of human emotion into art. And when he was out of new angles, all he had left was the shit. I certainly don't want to be anything like Yeats when I get old.
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The scope base for the Enfield should arrive tomorrow. This weekend we should be able to set it up and put the old girl through her paces at 100 yards. See what this old war rifle can really do. I wish Trish would let me fit a new stock for it, but she wants the vintage WW2 look. Fair enough, it's her rifle.

3:08 pm - January 22, 2008

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